Trib Reporter vs. AIDS Researcher: The Feud Goes On
As science writer Natalie Angier said in the Times review: “Gallo only sparingly mentions Crewdson by name, referring to him as an ‘obsessive reporter.’ Yet the book is so nearly a point-by-point rebuttal of [Crewdson’s] original Tribune article that it is hard to see how anybody not familiar with all the charges could follow the ins and outs of Gallo’s defenses. . . . Gallo’s narrative is driven not by its own internal logic but in response to his journalistic nemesis. And the tone is unfailingly defensive . . .”
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In conversation Gallo gets specific. “It’s a lot, lot worse than you can imagine,” he told us by phone a few months ago. “He’s going on his fifth year with me. If you hear the whole story, it’s almost impossible to believe. I’ve documented what I can.”
Gallo wasn’t calling Crewdson a burglar. He did say his house was entered “two weeks after Crewdson moved to Bethesda.”
Malcolm Gladwell, the Washington Post’s man on the scene, said in his lead that NIH had “effectively cleared . . . Gallo of the allegation that he stole the discovery of the AIDS virus from a fellow researcher.” Crewdson’s lead said that NIH had “ordered a formal, full-scale investigation into several aspects” of Gallo’s research. Our search for someone neutral to tell us whether the news Gallo got was good or bad led us to Barbara Culliton, who was then covering Gallo for Science magazine. She told us that the news, by and large, was good, and she added, disturbingly:
Crewdson took the Nature article much less seriously. But then he’d already gone over the same ground a month earlier. He’d pointed out gaping holes in Gallo’s argument before Gallo formally made it.
After we talked last fall, Culliton asked for copies of our articles on Gallo–and we were happy to send them to her. To our surprise, we got back a note saying she’d passed them along to Gallo.
